Botero Flies High in Singapore

His public sculptures are popular attractions in the SouthEast Asian city state. It turns out that for Singaporean collectors, Botero is a blue chip draw:

In 2004, over 600 people turned up for a pop-up exhibition of his works at a Keppel Road warehouse. Mr Dick Chia, managing director of arts handling firm Helutrans, which handled the exhibition, said: ” I learnt an important lesson that night – that people will go anywhere to see good art.” More recently, a Malaysian collector snapped up his Quartero painting for US$1.3million (S$1.7million) at the Art Basel fair in Hong Kong. […] The octogenarian, now married to his third wife, Greek sculptor Sophia Vari, owns homes in Monaco, Italy, Greece, Colombia and France, where he now lives.